DECISÕES DE DESINVESTIMENTO POR PARTE DAS EMPRESAS DE CAPITAL DE RISCO

Abstract

Building upon the equilibrium model of Jeng and Wells (2000) and prior research, we study the determinants of the European venture capital market, adding up the unemployment tax, the trade sale exit and the market/book ratio. We collected aggregated data about this market and macroeconomic data, to which we applied panel data models, with fixed and random effects. With the best adequacy of the random effect models, we got confirmation of the importance of some of the already used factors and also the introduced ones, confirming the importance of the unemployment tax and trade sales.

The questionnaire to venture capital investors of twenty European countries allowed us to perceive that they are young, have postgraduate education, prefer late stage investments, are indifferent to high-tech versus non high-tech investments, prefer relatively small investments, have strong involvement in portfolio companies, and exiting in the following order: trade sale, write-offs and IPO.

Using the data from the questionnaire, OLS and duration models for the hypotheses validation, and having presented the theory of asymmetric information, we analyzed the duration and the divestment decision. We conclude that the aspects related with the investor and their involvements in the business are the most influencial. In the case of IPO, late stage and high-tech investments enjoy greater probabilities of occurrence; while early stage and not high-tech investments are more likely for trade sale.